Chris Willman-Senior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Country star Hardy announced on social media Tuesday that he is canceling or postponing his next three concerts, due to what he described as “serious anxiety” and panic attacks that have “landed me in the hospital.” He indicated that these conditions have “taken over my life” over the last two weeks, and represent delayed trauma from a bus accident a year ago. The singer noted that he expects to be in better shape in nine days, when he will resume his fall headlining tour on Oct. 12 in Jonesboro, AR.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Record Store Day has announced a lineup of more than 170 exclusive titles for its annual Black Friday event this fall, with the “black” almost being a misnomer for this particular Nov. 24, 2023 rollout — given the amount of purple, gold, red, blue, green, marble, clear and splatter-colored vinyl variants on the list.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Stories about nonverbal autistic teens rarely galvanize the public imagination. But when one such youth has made the transition in a few short years from having a limited ability to communicate to having co-written a symphony, people are going to take notice, and be touched.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Spectacle is underrated. This is pretty much the antithesis of any accepted, traditional rock ‘n’ roll orthodoxy. It is also the natural human reaction to just about any or all of “U2:UV Live at Sphere Las Vegas,” the greatest-show-on-earth that opened Friday night in an enormous dome just off the Strip.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The first date of U2‘s 25-night run at Las Vegas’ Sphere is on the books, and for anyone who doesn’t mind spoilers, the makeup of the setlist can be revealed — although there is a mid-section that, judging from what Bono said, may be different each night during the run. The setlist for “U2: UV Live at Sphere Las Vegas” includes all of the classic 1991 “Achtung Baby,” as promised, but split into two sections.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony will be streamed live for the first time in November, as Disney+ has picked up rights to let viewers see the event as it happens, a marked change from the years in which music fans had to wait weeks to see an edited broadcast. The Disney+ livestream will go out coast-to-coast from Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Nov. 3 at 8 p.m..

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic How much is Paul Westerberg like Bob Dylan? That’s a provocative question — maybe one we need to save for when we know each other better. So let’s just start a related, but easier, one.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic For a while there, unbeknown to all but a few, there was a danger that hit country-pop duo Dan + Shay might go separate ways. But replacing the “+” in their moniker for a minus sign iwouldn’t have had much of a ring to it for either of them, so it’s to everyone’s benefit that they got to the root of what threatened to put a damper on their personal chemistry and found their duo mojo again in approaching the making of “Bigger Houses,” their fifth full-length album for Warner Nashville.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic After previously postponing all his September shows due to struggling with peptic ulcer disease, Bruce Springsteen has now put off all of his remaining shows for 2023, saying they will be pushed back to next year. Makeup dates will be announced next week, his reps said. Tickets for postponed performances will remain valid for the soon-to-be announced dates, and refunds will be offered for anyone who can’t make the rescheduled concerts if they submit requests within 30 days of the 2024 shows being announced.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Every year at the Americana Honors & Awards program in Nashville, Jim Lauderdale will exclaim, as a running joke, “Now, that’s Americana!” — usually right after someone has given a rousing performance in a style that most people wouldn’t reflexively classify as Americana. The fact that it’s said both enthusiastically and slightly facetiously does beg the obvious, perennial question: What’s Americana… all kidding aside? Standing outside the Ryman Auditorium, where the 22nd annual edition of the awards show was about to go down, Brandi Carlile had an answer. And since she is the closest thing to an offical mascot the genre has had since the passing of John Prine, when Carlile talks about Americana, people listen.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It’s FOMO no more for global Taylor Swift fans. The singer and AMC Theatres announced Tuesday morning that the “Taylor Swift| The Eras Tour” concert film will open in more than 100 countries worldwide on Oct. 13, the same day previously announced for the its North American bow.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Country-bluegrass songwriter and instrumentalist Mike Henderson, who won Grammy and CMA awards as a collaborator of country superstar Chris Stapleton, died Friday at age 70. His wife of nearly 45 years, Janet, said in a post on the musician’s website that he had been in “very good health” before dying peacefully in his sleep. Henderson’s death was initially confirmed in a Facebook post by his former band, the SteelDrivers, which he cofounded with Stapleton and several other players in the mid-2000s.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Oliver Anthony has made his first serious step toward getting off the DIY train after instantly vaulting to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 without without a label or agent. UTA announced Thursday that it had signed the Virginia-based upstart for global representation in all areas.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Bonnie Raitt, Billy Strings, Tyler Childers, the duo the War and Treaty and S.S. Goodman were among the winners as trophies were handed out at the 22nd annual Americana Honors & Awards show Wednesday night at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Raitt won the award for song of the year for her (literally) heart-rending number “Just Like That” — just like she did at the most recent Grammys, in a very rare example of overlap between the two shows.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Attentive music fans have had some time now to become familiar with who and what the singer Laufey is: a young Icelandic-Asian-American woman whose traditional balladry often recalls the pre-rock era. Still, for a few of us, it might have come as a very slight surprise to see her step onto the outdoor stage of the Ford in Hollywood over the weekend and be reminded that she is 24 and not 124.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When the lineup for the 2024 Stagecoach Festival was announced earlier this month, Bailey Zimmerman’s name was up there on the second line, right beneath Morgan Wallen’s. It represented a heady move up into the big leagues (and big fonts) for a 23-year-old who had only the most scant awareness that there was such a thing as a country music industry a few short years ago.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic U2 will begin its two-residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere with at least one new song to perform: “Atomic City,” a Vegas-themed tune that is expected to be released on or before the band’s Sept. 29 opening-night show. Filming a music video, the foursome repeatedly played through the song Saturday while positioned on a flatbed trailer that had come to a halt on Fremont Street in the city’s neon-filled downtown area.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Director Sam Jones won plaudits earlier this year for his HBO documentary “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed,” one of the best-regarded music docs since his own “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco” back in 2001. He also got attention this year for his HBO documentary series “Smartless: On the Road,” with Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It’s been a challenging time lately for Maren Morris in the country music world, as her views on key issues of the day have been in conflict with those of some of country’s more right-leaning artists or fans. She addresses the toll this has taken on her in a music video that came out Friday morning for a new song, “The Tree,” that makes it clear she’s feeling some estrangement from the genre, or even ready to think about moving on — although, ironically, the style of the song couldn’t be more country.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The 75th anniversary of Atlantic Records is being celebrated by that label and its sister catalog imprint, Rhino Records, with a year-long rollout of 90 vinyl releases and re-releases, covering the gamut from Led Zeppelin to Lizzo and John Coltrane to Coldplay. Most — not all — of the titles are being pressed on clear vinyl and are described in the label’s product descriptions as one-time pressings. Most have previously been released on vinyl, although three modern albums, Gayle’s “A Study in the Human Experience,” Christina Perry’s “Lovestrong” and Kehlani’s “Cloud 19,” are getting their first-time LP iterations as part of the campaign.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Jazz and animation make for strong bedfellows in “They Shot the Piano Player,” a film from Spanish directors Fernando Treuba and Javier Mariscal that represents an intriguing hybrid in all sorts of ways. It’s a love letter to the bossa nova movement that peaked in the 1960s, while at the same time it’s a sobering procedural that looks into the state murder of a musician that occurred as fascistic regimes rose to power in Latin America in the ’70s.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In the year 2023, Allison Russell has come as close as anyone is to being the face of Americana music, even though there are any rock-solid artists who’ve been in the limelight longer than she has — like Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams and her friend and mentor Brandi Carlile — who certainly count as poster boys and girls. She might even be the front-runner for the artist of the year prize at the upcoming Americana Honors & Awards show, which takes place in Nashville Sept. 20, notwithstanding that Billy Strings has been nominated again to defend his title.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic On the eve of heading up to Canada this week to attend the Toronto Film Festival, where his documentary “Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero” has its world debut Saturday night, pop superstar Lil Nas X was playing it nonchalant about stepping outside the music realm a bit to be the center of a splashy event in the movie world. “Not really,” he answers, when asked whether it means anything special to him to have a gala premiere at North America’s biggest film event. “I mean, I’m excited to go there and to see what people think, and also, I’ve never been to a film festival, so maybe I’ll meet people and and build some future relationships.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “I don’t know when we decided to let people write songs about things that they don’t do,” says country star Ashley McBryde. “As far as the singer-songwriter sentiment, I don’t know when we stopped demanding that of ourselves.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The album Jimmy Buffett was known to have worked on earlier this year has been announced for a fall release. The 14-song “Equal Strain on All Parts” will be out Nov. 3 via the Sun label, with guests including Paul McCartney, Emmylou Harris, Angelique Kidjo and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Before she issues her memoir this November, Barbra Streisand will be giving fans a couple of soundtracks for all that reading, in the form of two music releases due shortly beforehand on Oct. 27.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic A sophomore jinx would be a terrible thing to suffer before you’re old enough to have a legal drink to slug down the disappointment. It’s not something Olivia Rodrigo has to worry about. “Guts,” her second album, does feel at times like “Sour, Too” — a picking-up-right-where-we-left-off extension of her Grammy-winning 2021 debut — but that can only be counted as a good thing, if the spark is still there.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The lineup for the 2024 Stagecoach Festival in California has been announced, with Morgan Wallen set to be a first-time headliner and Eric Church and Miranda Lambert making their returns in that role over the course of April 26-28. Post Malone may be the most surprising name on the bill, as, although his affection for country has been well-known, he has not made appearances at country fests in the past.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic CMA Awards voters love Lainey Wilson. The singer ran far ahead of the pack as nominations for the 57th annual Country Music Association Awards were announced Thursday, picking up nine nods, nearly twice as many as the nearest finisher, Jelly Roll, who got five.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Bruce Springsteen has canceled all the remaining dates on his touring calendar for the month of September, with a statement on his social media saying he is suffering from peptic ulcer disease and has been advised by doctors to take the rest of the month off for treatment. “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have postponed all performances currently scheduled for September 2023, beginning with tomorrow’s show scheduled for the JMA Wireless Dome in Syracuse, NY,” the statement said. “Mr.